“She sent you to Mr. Hunt, Elizabeth?”
“Yes, Grandmother; but I didn’t go—I came home.”
“But, Elizabeth, what could you have done, requiring such extreme measures? Come here and tell me about it.”
And Blue Bonnet obeyed.
Grandmother listened to the long, rather incoherent story in a silence that Blue Bonnet did not feel to be entirely condemnatory. For Grandmother had the blessed gift of seeing more than one side of a question. Knowing the girl’s inherited love of freedom, remembering her upbringing, she had not the heart to be too hard upon her. And yet, for the girl’s own sake, she could not be too easy.
“And so,” Blue Bonnet ended wearily, “I want to go home. I’m so tired of being ‘trained,’ Grandmother.”
“Tired of it, at fifteen, Elizabeth! When the training has only just begun! But you shall go back—if you really wish to—though the going must be done decently and in order; or you shall stay, and do that which in your heart you know to be right. The decision shall rest with yourself; but remember, Elizabeth, as you decide, so will your whole life be the weaker or the stronger for it.”
“But, Grandmother—even if I could—it’s too late.”
“It is not too late, Elizabeth.”
“Grandmother, I can’t do it!” Blue Bonnet sobbed.